2nd Gen Christians and a common Dilemma

Winter in California is freezing this year. Its all the way into 60s-70s.

I went to Disney and people were wearing shorts, but you could tell

who the natives were because we knew how to dress in our warm winter coats and

hats…woman had scarf’s on! That is a Californian!

2ND GENERATION OF CHRISTIANS WHO ARE OUTSIDE OUR CHURCH BUBBLE

That’s not what I wanted to blog about though. I have been around a lot of 2nd and 3rd generation Christians and there seems to be something that God is working on within a part of that people group.

Sometimes someone born and raised in church has the “I know enough to have to be saved but don’t have enough connection to God to always want to be saved.” the Bible, miracles, God stories, these don’t affect someone the same way who inherited them rather then experienced them as part of their own relationship with God. I know several people who are so loving and amazing and were brought up in the faith, but just don’t have enough personal connectivity or experience to want to pursue being a Christian right now until something happens to make it really personal. We are not talking about rebellious individuals but just people who love God but who have not grown spiritually because they don’t know how to get on the road to that growth personally and the roads modeled to them might seem suffocating.

In some ways that can sound selfish of them, but I personally understand as one who was raised around church and had to attend tons of meetings where my life revolved around services. I began to resent the religion when I didn’t have the relationship. Especially in the crowd of circle dancers (same 6 dance moves for 10 years) and shofar blowers (the kind that never had a lesson and made the horn sound like a 3 year old was blowing it) and weird musicians (singing “I am a small and lowly grape…clutching to the vine, waiting for the day when I become my saviors wine…”) these had no meaning to me and yet I was afflicted by them. They embarrassed me as a young man because no one could explain why…we were just supposed to have a good heart about it all which meant don’t have a critical analysis because that means you have a critical spirit.

The problem with that is you never feel like you are being honest with yourself. I know a lot of these young people feel like hypocrites when they can’t successfully sit through a service without feeling critical because it’s not really their service and if they were going to give themselves fully to it, it means they are responsible for the weirdness that they feel so separate from at the same time.

SOME INSIGHT AND SUGGESTIONS

Now here is a possible solution, relationship takes time to build and God wants to take real time through real people to build connection and relationship to the religiously disenfranchised, but it’s going to take a non judgmental approach to loving no matter if the person has the same values in common with you or not. You are allowed to meet with people who don’t connect to your church or ministry, the main connection we are supposed to have is love and mutual respect. Half of my core of life friends experiences the structure of our community called church together, but then many of my other friends are friends outside of organized faith.

For those who are jaded, organized meetings don’t always facilitate that building process. Just like when you are dating you are seeing a person one on one and fall in love, it takes some real personal experience of prayer and getting to know God to fall in love with Him. If you were inoculated to that (inoculation means you were given just enough of a disease to fight it off) then meetings feel unnatural until you have built relationship.

I think God is about to reveal Himself to a whole generation of misunderstood individuals who were raised around church and meetings and structure that didn’t have the same meaning to them as to their parents. I think if we spend time with them in a way that is love based, not performance based, then we will gain friends and so when God changes us, it will change them naturally through Osmosis vs. through verbal communication or structure.

It’s time for the hundreds of thousands who were raised in church but don’t want to go anymore to feel unconditional love that doesn’t require anything more than love in return. Jesus came in a similar time in Israel and He spent more time outside of the Temple with people who had been abused by the religions of the day as He did inside the Temple. He lead the lost sheep of Israel back to their first love through building relationship with them and meeting them with the very real Father in their every day lives.

The early church that started was not a replacement for relationship or an institute, but a place where friends could come together and relate about the goodness of God and support each other through the very real turmoil of life.

If we are going to see a harvest of harvesters, I think we need to love those who we already have connection to and sow into their lives and dreams without the pressure of putting structure on it.

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Shawn, I just want to say that you have explained the way I have felt for a very long time. Your descriptions of the shofar blowers and dancing circles were exactly correct and I sort of laughed a little. I got involved in the whole prophetic movement back when I was 15. Long story, but I began to hear God prophetically and it became this thing where I would hang around these circles where people loved God dearly and wanted to hear from him, but did all these things that, to me, started to feel like they were more iconic rather than a true expression of what people actually felt. After my first year in college four years ago (I graduate in June), I really wanted nothing to do with the prophetic movement. I wanted to continue being a committed Christian, loving and pursuing God, just without what I saw was the weird stuff.
Its hard to fully articulate how your post reconciles a lot of what I felt, and also just a call for me to see God in the people who may not seek God the same as I do. Thanks again buddy!

I had a radical conversion when i was 21. My kids were raised in Christianity and yes “bore” the ” I am a lowly grape clinging to the vine” lol and mom burning “Pocahontas”movie ( Yikes yes i did! lol repented ever since)

This was SO right on and helps alot to understand how to reach and love my kids who DO love Jesus and the supernatural but i know struggle sometimes.

My heart breaks sometimes watching 2nd generation Christians who you can clearly see resent either being “expected” to fill every servant area in church just because they SHOULD because they are the most familiar with it. When they just want to enjoy the services like everyone else with no pressure.

My kids have always had relationships outside the church which i’m glad i allowed and i’m glad they have had a sense of balance.

Seriously THANK you for this “key” to God’s heart safely kept in these amazing vessels already full in ways they don’t even realize.